Rosset

Genet, Beckett,Burroughs, Henry Miller, Ionesco, Oe, Duras. Harold Pinter and Tom Stoppard. Hubert Selby Jr, John Rechy and the Marquis de Sade. The legendary film I Am Curious (Yellow). The books that assaulted the fort of propriety that was the United States in the 1950s and 60s, Lady Chatterley s Lover, The Tropic of Cancer, My Secret Life. The Evergreen Review. Victorian erotica. The Autobiography of Malcolm X. A bombing, a sit-in, and a near-fistfight with Norman Mailer. The common thread between these disparate elements, a number of which reshaped modern culture, was Barney Rosset. Rosset was the antidote to the trope of the gentleman publisher personified by other pioneering figures of the industry such as Alfred A. Knopf, Bennett Cerf and James Laughlin. If Barney saw a crowd heading one wayhe looked the other. If he knew something was forbidden, he regarded it as a plus. Unsurprisingly, financial ruin, along with the highs and lows of critical reception, marked his career. But his unswerving dedication to publishing what he wanted made him one of the most influential publishers ever. Rosset began work on his autobiography a decade before his death in 2012, and several publ